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KUMC, KSU projects prompt policy debate

Board of Regents' policy on endorsing building projects at issue

The top budget request by The University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., will be renewal of an appeal for state support for a proposed $75 million health education building to enhance training of new physicians.

Appealing to state government leaders for financial backing on this and other major projects sought by universities governed by the Kansas Board of Regents raises intriguing issues in a Kansas political climate defined by tightening of expenditures — especially for higher education.

Fred Logan, chairman of the Board of Regents, said during a meeting Wednesday that resumption of the KUMC proposal and a new request for $15 million in state support for a $50 million business school at Kansas State University made it imperative for the board to decide when and where to invest its political capital on behalf of the six state universities.

"I wanted to raise the question," Logan said. "I think it's an important policy issue the board is going to have to come to grips with."

University officials pored through hundreds of pages of documents in presentations to the nine-member board to delve into past, current and future budget profiles. The discussion at the board's office in Topeka touched upon long-term debt, athletics, academic reform, bricks-and-mortar priorities and other issues.

The briefings served as opportunity for three new members appointed by Brownback to attack the learning curve of considerations built into financial decisions made on each campus.

In the past, the regents blessed an appeal for $30 million in bonds and release of $25 million returned by the federal government for excess payroll tax paid by the medical center. The governor offered $10 million over two years and a $35 million bond package.

Legislators approved $1 million to keep the KUMC project on life support. Meanwhile, lawmakers also delivered to KUMC back-to-back 4 percent budget cuts in the current and upcoming fiscal years.

Douglas Girod, executive vice chancellor at KUMC, said the university would return to the Capitol in 2014 to appeal for substantial state investment in the health education facility. Prospective students are attending medical school elsewhere because KUMC's academic facilities are often viewed as ill-suited for modern instructional activities.

"The need for that has not gone away. The need for more physicians has not gone away," Girod said. "We need some degree of support for that, which is going to be key for us to go and raise private dollars."

In 2010, Kansas ranked 39th among 50 states in active physicians per 100,000 people. About two-thirds of the state's current physicians are expected to retire by 2030.

Kirk Schulz, president at Kansas State, said the university's top facility priority would be to secure $5 million a year for renovation of the architecture school. However, he devoted much of his commentary to a plan to obtain $1.5 million annually to cover $15 million in bond debt for construction of the new business school.

"We are going to provide for the state of Kansas a $50 million state-of-the-art facility that is badly needed for a growing school, and it's going to cost the state $15 million," Schulz said. "The people who are donating and providing financial support for this are writing $10 million checks have an expectation that the state will do something."

He said this private-public model likely would be repeated at Kansas State for development of a new physical sciences complex with classrooms for math, physics and chemistry.

"We'll go out and hustle a lot of money for that, but at some point we're going to probably need a little bit of help," Schulz said.